Falsities
by elenathehun
Summary: [ISSR] Five things that never, ever happened in the KotOR era.


Welcome, one and all, to my new repository of half-written KotOR plot-bunnies. I'm sticking them here because I'm tired of scattering them all acrossff.n and it's easier. Feel free the steal the idea if you like it - just remember to say where you got it from, OK? And the ISSR is a blanket warning: some of these 'fics will focus on romance between two different species.

Other than that, enjoy!

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"**Shadow Pains"**

Sometimes, Bao-Dur wonders why he hadn't gotten out when he had the choice. Then he sees the lists of planets the Sith have bombed out of existence, and the crowds of refugees clogging the Core, and he remembers. In some small yet important way, he caused this. He created this. And he has to fix it.

And that's why his ship, his lovely, lovely ship is falling apart around him. His first command, and the Sith are pounding it to pieces. They boarded about an hour ago, and barely any of the crew got through to the escape pods. He knows, intellectually, that they're probably all dead, but he waits. They're his crew, and he'll be damned if he leaves them a moment before he must.

At least the Jedi is safe and away in her escape pod. None of her retinue have managed to get past the Sith, and he wonders if they're as dead as his crew probably is. He had hoped that the added offensive abilities of the Jedi would have balanced the bigger target they created, but apparently he was wrong…

He really should have known better.

When one of the Marines calls in, saying he and his bunkmate were coming through, he couldn't stop an involuntary smile coming to his face, and he gives them directions to the escape pod bay, praying that the two soldiers would be able to get through. If even a few survived…

About an hour later, the last survivor limped her way toward him, the smoking bodies of a half-dozen Sith soldiers clearly visible behind her.

"Trask?" Bao-Dur asks, but he needn't. The woman shakes her head sadly, her mouth a thin hard line. She's a tall woman, almost as tall as him, and dark, for a human – dark skin, dark hair, and clear, dark eyes. She's not one of his regular crew – she was part of the Bastila's retinue, a last minute addition. He frowns, watching her, and their eyes meet. Bao-Dur feels a prickle of something run up his spine to the sensitive skin around his horns. He _knows_ her.

And then he realizes. Somehow, someway, she is a survivor of that last battle. Maybe she's Republic, and maybe she's one of the Mandalorians, it doesn't matter – she is his responsibility now. He forces a smile onto his face, and holds his hand out.

"I'm Bao-Dur, the commander of this fine vessel. What say we get out of here?"

She hesitates before taking his hand, but there's nothing tentative about her handshake.

"I'd say lead the way, sir," she says with a smile in her voice. "I'm Sergeant-"

Five minutes later, an escape pod releases itself from the _Endar Spire_ and falls to the surface of Taris.

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"**Predator/Prey"**

Calo Nord thought Taris was a junkyard of a planet, and he was surprised that people still wanted to come here. True, they were the dregs of the universe, but even the dregs of the universe could get to much better (and much less cheaper) garbage heaps than Taris.

Still, Davik was offering him a lot of money, and it didn't pay to upset a man like Davik unnecessarily, so he made sure his face and voice didn't show his distaste as the crime lord gave him a tour of his compound. Now he wanted to show him his prospective co-workers…

"And these are my two top lieutenants," Davik said boastfully, and Calo looked at the people in front of him assessingly. If he took this job, they would be his competition – and Calo Nord did not like competition.

The first one who caught his eye was a big vicious bruiser of a man, grey and scarred. Calo was pretty sure he was a Mandalorian selling his services, and he sniffed internally. Mandalorians. No sense of subtlety, no sense of the hunt. All they cared about was the destruction of their enemies – and that was their weakness.

Calo pushed past the Mandalorian roughly – and froze. A prickle of tension traveled down his spine and he suddenly began sweating. He was afraid – and not because of the Mandalorian currently glaring at him. No, such visceral fear was a reaction to a predator…a predator such as the woman standing in front of him.

She wasn't particularly frightening in the ordinary sense of the word – she was not terribly ugly or abnormally beautiful, nor did she show any sign of being anything other than what she was: a pretty woman dressed in practical black and white armor. Against his will, Calo's mouth quirked into a tiny smile: he admired a woman who could color-coordinate.

She had made no attempt to show her body as a distracting tactic, no attempt to intimidate with an assortment of dangerous weapons. All she carried on her demurely (and practically) covered body was a vibroblade, unarmed accuracy gloves covering her delicate hands and wrists. No, he was afraid of her because of what she was. Everything about her, from her downy skin and delicately-pointed ears to her slitted feline eyes screams _predator_.

Calo suppresses the urge to step away. He knows the only reason he wants to throw up, the only reason he is sweating and shuddering like a puling _coward_ is because the primal instincts in the back of his brain have tagged the Cathar woman a predator to his soft, undefendable human body.

He takes a step forward and offers his gloved hand to her, and a flash of what looks to be respect goes through her sharp eyes. She gently takes his hand with hers, and he feels the prick of claws through the leather. He shudders.

"Calo Nord," he says calmly in his dry voice.

"Juhani," the Cathar woman says with a purr, and smiles suddenly, white fangs appearing. A pink tongue flicks out for a split-second, and Calo raises an eyebrow.

_Did she just…?_

He thinks he's going to like this job.

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"**Heir"**

Canderous knows it's over the very second Mira challenges him. He's not a fool, after all, and he knows just as well as she does how very old and tired he is. He's sixty years old, and no amount of stimulants and implants and experience will help him against a warrior such as her. She's not a little girl anymore – she has the experience of a hardened warrior, and a body to match it.

Still, he will die well. The battle seems to take forever to him, but his internal clock times it at 25 minutes, 37 seconds before he goes down wheezing, his heart pounding erratically. He couldn't feel his legs, could barely move his arms, so he could only watch as Mira gently took the helmet off his head.

For the first time in fifteen years, Canderous feels sunshine on his face, and for the first time in just as long, he sees his daughter's red hair and green eyes with his own eyes and not the helmet sensors. Then her face disappears behind the face-plate of his helmet, and…he is satisfied, at least. He dies with the knowledge that that his daughter has surpassed him, and with the hope that she will continue in his work, and that's all a man can ask for, really.

The new Mandalore directs her Lieutenants to make him a grave, and at his burial, she leaves her old helmet there. It's a gift, from one Mandalorian to another.

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"**I Spy With my Little Eye Something That Starts With an A…"**

"Atton! Wake up!"

He doesn't wake up entirely when he hears that – only enough to wonder why his CO sounds so stressed. Then she punches him in the shoulder and he remembers that they're still on Serreco, still in the forest, and the dogs are still after them.

He wakes up really quickly after that.

They pack up quickly and silently – although that might have something to do with the fact that there's barely anything to pack up. An assault rifle he'd grabbed from a Mandalorian trooper after he'd killed him; her lightsaber and the vibroblade she'd snagged from a smuggler on the way out of the city...oh, and the battle plans.

They were gone in five minutes

The forest was wet and shadowed in the pre-dawn light – it had rained in the night, Atton realized, and the only reason they weren't wet was because they'd been lucky enough to find some hole in the ground to wait out the night.

"Not luck," she says quietly, and he startles. "The Force." Her voice is nearly a whisper, and he realizes with some annoyance that she'd read his mind. He suppresses it for now, though – this isn't the time or place to have a fight with your partner. She seems to smile in agreement. Atton tries to look on the bright side of things. She hadn't had _nearly_ as good a sense of humor when he'd first met her…

They trudge for another half-hour through the forest, and Atton hoped for more rain. It would destroy their tracks and scent, maybe depress their body temperature enough to fool the Mandalorian heat-sensors. It would be uncomfortable, but Atton would rather be uncomfortable than dead.

"How old are you, Atton?" Atton nearly jumps out of his skin. They've been together nearly three months, and he still can't get used to these surprise questions.

"What, can't magic it out of my brain?" he snaps heatedly, then blushes when she raises an eyebrow in admonishment. _Too loud, far too loud…_

"No," she whispers even lower. "It doesn't work like that."

Atton just rolls his eyes. _Good to know, that…_

"I'm eighteen," he says quietly. "Nineteen next month. And you?"

She grins quicksilver-quick, and he notices that in the dawn, she's far too noticeable, all white and silver and pale. Her clothes are more brown than gray now that the mud has been rubbed in, but she is still far too noticeable. "I'm significantly older than you, Atton," she says with a straight face, and Atton grins. They've played this game before, on those long starfighter trips between planets.

" 'Significantly older'? That's not an answer, grandma," he teases, and she gasps in mock horror.

"I'm not that old, thank you. Just…older."

Atton shakes his head. "Not good enough. Five years older? Ten years older? Old enough to be my mother?"

She's opening her mouth to say something when they stumble across the battlefield, and that's partly the reason she screams.

"Shut up!" he hisses, and to be honest, she only screams for a split-second, but it feels like forever. Two bright spots of color flare high on her cheeks. It's been a long time since she's acted so unprofessionally. Atton sighs, and tries to gentle his tone.

"All right, all right, let's look around. We might find something useful on the bodies," and he's proud of her when she just begins going through the field. She doesn't even look squeamish anymore…

"Found anything?"

"Some armor, some money, a few frag grenades. You?"

"I think this was a Marine platoon – they've all got blaster rifles."

They pull various pieces of charred and muddy armor on, and he makes her take a few of the grenades and two blasters. Her lightsaber is real pretty and shiny, but it won't be much good against a Mandalorian sniper – at least, not without blowing their cover.

He looks at her as she clumsily adjusted the blasters on her thighs, her lightsaber banging against her hip. _There's still something wrong with her…_

And then he notices what's wrong, and he nearly laughs because that's _easy_ to fix. He bends down and scoops up a handful of mud, and tells her, "Just hold still, OK?" and then he begins smearing the mud all over her head and face. She sighs a few times, and then rolls his eyes when he tells her that if she hadn't gotten her buzz cut, it would be so much worse.

"Oh, shut up, Atton," she says irritably, and he just grins wider and makes sure to rub it in especially well.

In the pearly dawn light that shines through the clouds, she looks as far from heaven as a woman can be, and he's sure he looks the same way. They're wearing dead men's armor and standing in the middle of a rotting battlefield, and _this is normal_.

When it begins raining, they turn and walk out the clearing, him leading the way. "C'mon, Atris, how old are you?" he asks again, and she just shakes her head.

"Don't you know you should never ask a woman that question, Atton?"

"Yeah, but you're not a woman, you're a Jedi…"

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"**Plan B"**

Vrook knows the boy has potential. He's clever and hardworking and he believes in the Code, and with proper training, he could become a very good Jedi, a man Vrook could be proud of. But there are no Masters to take him, and tomorrow the boy will turn thirteen, and it will be too late.

Vrook sighs. He really _abhors_ waste. So he motions to one of the few Knights still here on Dantooine and says, "Get me Mical, please."

The boy approaches in the correct manner, and Vrook notes that he's grown another inch in the last month. He'll have to get some new robes…

"Mical, I would be honored if you would become my apprentice," Vrook says quietly, and he sees a flicker of surprise in the boy's blue eyes, surprise and…disappointment?

Whatever it is, it doesn't take long for the boy to bow and say, "I would be honored, Master Vrook."


End file.
